“Wolf!”

Aries's warning travelled down the slope of the hill and into town. He paused to suck in another deep breath, cupping his hands around his mouth as he relayed his warning once more.

“A wolf is coming!”

A single villager paused in their labor to look towards Aries.

Aries relaxed, relieved that someone was heeding his warning. He nodded urgently at the villager, gesturing for them to convey the severity of the situation to everyone else in town.

In response, the villager held up a rude gesture, finger raised to the sky.

Aries balked.

The villager waved their arm around, mouth moving quickly as their eyebrows pinched together. Aries flinched. Even if he couldn’t hear what the villager was saying from his vantage point on the hill, it was clear that they weren’t saying anything good about him. The villager stomped their foot twice, drawing the attention of another villager. The second villager stepped closer to determine the cause of the commotion, and after receiving the story from the first villager, they also turned a rude gesture at Aries.

Since Aries’s self-appointment as the town’s guard, the villagers have experienced two false warnings. Each time, they dropped everything they were doing to shore up the town's defenses and mobilize their forces against the supposed ‘threat’ and each time, they were told—only once they ran up the hill with their pitchforks and torches, that they had done it all for naught. The villagers grumbled as they retreated back down the hill and Aries simply returned to relaxing against a tree, pleased by the entertainment he could conjure from a single shout.

The two villagers continued to shout at Aries, venting their frustrations. Once they were done, they shared a laugh, promptly returned to their tasks.

That’s not good.

Aries paced in place, pressing a crooked finger to his chin as he thought.

There was actually a wolf this time!

The black dot in the distance has now grown considerably larger and closer. If Aries squinted, he could begin to make out the wolf’s powerful limbs covered in fur and ending in sharp claws.

His hand fell to his sword. It was a flimsy thing, fashioned out of the scrap metal he found while digging through the town's dusty storage hut and barely sharp enough to slice through fruit. His armor was the same, leather stitched clumsily together to provide protection that was little more than what his skin offered. Still, these two items were all that Aries had in the face of this threat, and they made him braver than he would’ve been without them.

Aries glanced back at the town. Everyone was still living as they usually did, blissfully ignorant of the oncoming danger. He turned back around, resigning himself to his fate.

He wasn’t going to go down without a fight. But, if he lives this, he’s going to demand rewards from everyone in town for his hard work in protecting them.

Nodding to himself, Aries squared his shoulders as you slowly drew closer.