Choose Your Path

Chapter One

"Urmudir pay attention please. This is important." The mentor's voice rang through her mind before she snapped to attention. "Zoning out again? Really? Come on you know better than that. You need to always be fully alert if you want to get to the high guard."

Sighting Urmudir nodded to her mentor Zephon. "I understand. I'm sorry I zoned out like that, again." She responded ashamed of her actions.

"Now, answer my question. What is one of the vantage points that a guard can have in stalking a potential threat to our leaders?" Zephon asked.

Hearing the question Urmudir sighed and responded in a bored tone, "High on the rocks protected by the forest surroundings while staying downwind. Do we really have to go through this everyday? This was one of the first things learned and it is for sure stuck in my head that I will never forget it."

Hearing this question Zephon chuckled "It is required to make sure you don't forget. You may think that you won't but there will come a day where I ask and you won't be able to tell me. One day you will be the one having to ask and answer for me."

The femora sighed and shook her head. The grey muzzled brown wolf was right as always. Urmudir had been assigned to Zephon as he had worked with her parents before they died and he went into retirement. However he had volunteered to come out of retirement to train Urmudir as the white wolf showed promising signs of being like her parents her only downfall was her attention span which Zephon had vowed to work on to get Urmudir to her highest potential. It hadn't been easy to get where she was right now but there was still work to be done. Urmudir looked at Zephon, "Is this what Wuniperas has to go through for his?" Urmudir asked which only made Zephon sigh.

"We've been over this Urmudir. You want to be guard like your parents were. The pack along with the other leaders even see that you can be just like them, even better. But you have to stay focused with your task at hand. You can do this you just have to stick with it. Now, let's go on a run. Why do we take long runs?" Zephon asked as he stood up and turned to being the run.

"So that when escorting the pack or our allies from a threat we can keep up and keep them moving and also so that when the leaders have to be moved we are the only protection they have so we must have good stamina and reflexes incase we come across a threat or that we even have to lead the threat away but that's is only last resort. First priority is always the leader." Urmudir explained still not happy but understood that this was an important thing to do.

Zephon nodded and moved into a jog. Even though he may have been retired he still would go for runs in the early rays of morning and the last rays of the day. Urmudir jogged beside her mentor but inside was hoping that her training for the day would be over soon. She was done with this. It was like the same routine over and over again but yet she couldn't change it. Testing had not come yet. The testing came to make sure that each trainee was gaining more and more experience as well as knowledge in their given rank they were going to. Failure would hold you back and if it was so horrible then one would go through testing to see what rank they would be best suited in. However there were those that were rankless, those were the ones in the group that were treated almost like a nobody yet their home was still in whatever group they were born into occasionally they would do things to help their groups but it was on a rare occasion yet even if they didn't have a rank they were still trained on how to fight and defend themselves. That was one of the laws of the groups that had been made since the groups were first formed, all must be trained to fight and defend themselves no matter who they are or where they stand in the specific group, everybody would be provided these skills. But there were those who that when they were tested the would show great acceleration in their rank where they would be pulled from training and put into the field of their rank. Only after being viewed by the other leaders and that they would all agree, if denied then they would go back to training but it would be stepped up a level. They could even get called back early for testing to see if they then qualified.