"Chief, we were too late!"
When Red Wolf and several warriors from his tribe rode their fierce beasts to the ravaged mountain village, all they saw were shattered walls and the embers of burned buildings.
The thatched huts and earthen houses the mountain folk had painstakingly built had been razed. The bodies of the old, weak, sick, and disabled lay strewn across the ground. Of the able-bodied, not a single person remained, alive or dead.
Only a few Shaman Folk men who had escaped the disaster by being out hunting wandered blankly through the ruined wreckage, as though their souls had left them, searching for the bodies of their loved ones and children.
At the sight of Red Wolf and his companions, they abruptly snapped out of their daze and tightened their grips on their bone spears and bows.
Red Wolf stepped forward and shouted, "Wa dada! Jili gulu!"
"Wala wala!" The Shaman Folk men grew agitated, waving their weapons as they spoke.
Red Wolf gestured and spoke loudly, only managing to calm them after considerable effort.
In private, however, his heart remained heavy. Deeply worried, he told his tribesmen, "I never imagined the evil fiends would really come slaughtering their way here!"
Over the past several decades, the members of the Heavenly Dragon Gate had inflicted no shortage of violence on the Shaman Folk. But their whips could not reach this far; they had only operated on the plains thousands of miles away.
More of the Shaman Folk's casualties had come after they took in rebels who had risen in resistance, bringing collective punishment and relentless pursuit upon themselves.
By now, Red Wolf keenly felt the responsibilities and duties he bore as the chief of a tribe. He urged the Shaman Folk who had lost their loved ones to